Liz Snyder

OK, confession time: I really haven’t exercised in about 6 months.

There, I admitted it.  I have always harbored a certain aversion to structured physical activity. And every time I start up a new physical routine, it feels more like punishing my body that loving it. I get disgusted with my body, disgusted at being out of breath at the top of a stairwell, disgusted that my pants don’t fit – and I have this little furious spasm of workouts that never lasts much more than a month at a time.

I spend so much of my time thinking and writing about healthy, nutritious food. I eat pretty healthy stuff, but I never use food (or lack of food) to punish myself. Food, for me, is a joyous experience to be celebrated and enjoyed. Food is pleasure – and I’ve learned to take pleasure in everything, from chocolate cake to collard greens.

Movement? That’s another story. Since I was a teenager I’ve used exercise exclusively to punish myself. I’ve always felt on the awkward ungraceful side of humanity and have never, ever felt true ‘ownership’ of my body as a physical entity. My intellect is all mine, but my body is this unwieldy appendage that never quite does what I want it to, never quite looks how I think it should. A nuisance. And when I exercise, I direct my irritation right down into every ungainly muscle, right into my cellular framework.

When I began this blog and started writing about learning to love oneself from the inside out, I realized I couldn’t do that anymore. So I quit. And I let myself rest. Really rest. I needed the time to free my mind from the guilt of “I really should” and free my body from the punishment of workouts that were a zero-sum-game of physical fitness vs. damage to my psyche.

It was in that deep rest that an inkling of an answer came to me. It started with just noticing my daughter in all her glorious, frenetic and yes, awkward, physicality. Her ability for movement to be play, to inhabit her body so unselfconsciously.

I realized: I want that too. I want to dance, I want to play, I want to feel every muscle and have the spazzyness that is me put a smile on my face.

So off I went, to dance class of all places. I have never, and I mean never, taken a dance class in my life. There’s a movement called 5Rhythms and it’s all about free-form, ecstatic, no-holds barred life-affirming dance. You move and sweat for 3 hours and there are no rules about how you do it. It’s easily the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I’ve started to go about once a month, and its all I can handle – not because of the physical workout, but because of the emotional upheaval I experience in that process of deeply and profoundly letting go in a roomful of strangers. Of realizing that there’s a world full of people who are at least as ungainly as I am but take joy in their bodies in a visceral, creative, and joyful way. Of hoping against hope that I will someday be that way too. That I can help my daughter hold onto that.

I realized… slowly but surely… that there is a part of me that loves to move. I just have never given her permission to inhabit my body. Never let myself feel exposed and raw and sensual in the way that only dance can allow.

In coaching people about learning to love the simple pleasures of food and get away from the diet-fail-shame cycle I have so often talked about just letting go of rules, of expectations, of “shoulds”. It’s funny that I’m only now beginning to allow the same for myself with movement.

Nowadays, I have an awesome list of activities that I actually love and want to do. I love dancing, hiking, hoola hooping, the occasional yoga class… and I am finally giving myself permission to learn to surf. I’ve wanted to ever since I was 9 years old and watched Endless Summer one sweltering landlocked summer in southern Indiana. I’ve been in California for 20 years and I’m finally done telling myself I’m not coordinated enough to try!

I’m trying to do each of my favorite activities about once a month, but if I don’t get to it, no biggie. I have permission to move, permission to rest, and permission to be.  It’s time to live with the contrast, to celebrate life in its fullness without judgment, punishment, or shame. Chocolate cake and collard greens, sofas and surfboards… I’m learning that it’s all meant to be enjoyed.